How A Harvard Psych Professor, a French Bistro, and bottles of Yoo-Hoo Birthed The Fantasy Sports Revolution.

     Marc Edelman published a wonderfully informative treatise on fantasy sports in Harvard Law School's "Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law. The article, A Short Treatise on Fantasy Sports and the Law: How America Regulates its New National Pastime, provides an interesting history lesson on the origins of Fantasy sports as we know it.

• Wait, I thought "Rotisserie Baseball" was a reference to the San Diego Chicken...

           Edelman traces the birth of fantasy sports all the way back to 1960, when Harvard psychology professor William Gamson and a group of friends created a game they called, "The Base-ball Seminar" (Edelman notes that Gamson used the term "Seminar" in the title of the game, to avoid it being associated with illegal sports gambling). 


         The game's rules were amazingly similar to the Rotisserie Baseball we know today. Each participant drafted a team consisting of Major League Baseball players, and the winner was the participant team which "earned the most points in a pre-determined set of statistical categories". The game was made merely for the amusement of Gamson and his friends. Unbeknownst to them, those original participants became the god-fathers of modern fantasy sports entertainment.  

       The game really got its break when one of the first participants in "The Base-ball Seminar", mentioned the game to a journalist named Daniel Okrent, who in 1979 "proposed" the game to a group of his friends in a New York French Bistro called La Rotisserie Francaise. Every year from then on, Okrent and friends returned to La Rotisserie Francaise, for their annual "Rotisserie Baseball auction".  That's right folks, the all-american sport of fantasy rotisserie baseball was named after a French restaurant (A fun trivia factoid).

      Oh, and what was the traditional prize for winning this newly founded Rotisserie league? (No, not a year's supply of croissants and baguettes). Cash and a "dousing in the chocolate drink Yoo-Hoo".  And the rest is history...

      Check out Edelman's article in Harvard Law's "Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law for more on the history, statistics, and legal issues behind the fantasy sports industry today.  Its a great read.